Google Chrome TV ads may bring a tear to your eye

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As Mike Meyer’s Coffee Talk character would say, “I’m verklempt.” After watching two commercials from Google advertising its Chrome browser, I’m pretty choked up, and I kind of want to give someone a hug. Part of its “the web is what you make of it” campaign, the two commercials seem to focus on making us want to cry more than explaining what Chrome has to offer as your browser.

The 90-second-long ads were actually made for TV and aired Tuesday night on Glee and One Tree Hill. It appears that Google is marketing towards teenage girls, but we know people outside of that demographic watch those shows, too.

The first commercial, “Dear Sophie,” shows a father who’s keeping a sort of digital scrapbook of his daughter’s life using Gmail and starting at the moment she’s born. Using Gmail for scrapbooking is definitely a lot faster than traditional scrapbooking, plus there’s no sticky glue to deal with. The video, which is based on a true story, shows the father creating a Gmail login for his daughter. He then composes messages, and uploads videos and photos of her as she grows up. Kudos to Google for having us reaching for the tissues at 13 seconds in.

The viewer is carried to birthdays, to ballet class, to losing teeth, and so on. The video shows the dad simply dragging photos from Picasa into Gmail, and even showing a Google Map of the home she lived in for her first four years. It’s actually a really fantastic idea for a simple way to keep a record of memories for years to come.

The second video is part of the “It Gets Better Project.” The project, started by columnist and gay-rights activist Dan Savage, began with just one YouTube video of him telling gay teens that are dealing with being bullied that it does in fact get better. Savage encouraged other people, both gay and not gay, to make their own YouTube videos to spread the message. According to the It Gets Better website, there are more than 10,000 user-created videos that have been viewed over 35 million times. The Chrome video shows how easy it is to use the browser to create, upload, and share YouTube videos. Again, we teared up during the shot from the “Gay Cop, Gay Vet” video saying “you are perfect and wonderful just the way you are.”

For people who don’t really care about what browser they use, the heartstring-pull tactic may work. These users don’t really care about things like speed, or features like the Chrome Web Store where you can get apps, themes, and extensions. It may just be that Google is trying to get us to tear up a little, and, in our bleary-eyed stupor, click and download Chrome.